Category: Movies

Movie producer Lawrence Bender has been entertaining people with his films for the last 20 years.

Born Lawrence Kirk Bender in The Bronx, New York City in 1957, he attended the University of Maine and graduated with a Civil Engineering degree in 1979. After graduation, he followed his dream of dancing for a few years. Unfortunately, an injury cut that short, and he pursued an acting career, eventually moving on to producing.

Over the years his movies have received 29 Academy Award nominations, three for Best Picture, with six of them taking home the Award. An Inconvenient Truth, a film that raised a lot of attention to climate change, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Lawrence Bender has produced over forty films during his career. One of his first was Intruders, which starred Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. Some of the other more notable movies he’s produced are Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Kill Bill, and Inglorious Basterds.

My own personal favorite Lawrence Bender movie is Reservoir Dogs, which he produced with his business partner and good friend Quentin Tarantino in 1992. Reservoir Dogs is about a diamond heist gone wrong, and its violence and profanity would end up being classic hallmarks of Tarantino movies. It’s even gained a cult-like status.

The main characters of the botched heist are all aliases: Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, and Mr. White, portrayed by actors Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Lawrence Tierney, Harvey Keitel, and Chris Penn (not necessarily in that order). When they meet up at a warehouse after the botched heist and believe the job was a setup by one of their own, trust quickly turns to suspicion, and violence between the gangsters ensues.

Like some of his other movies, Bender makes a cameo appearance, this time as a police officer who chases Mr. Pink.

There’s also a video game based on the movie that was introduced in 2006, however, it was banned in Germany, New Zealand, and Australia for its violence.

Lawrence Bender was also successful producing music videos and commercials with A Band Apart, a production company he founded with Tarantino that was active from 1991 to 2006.